Do you assign a text to your students only to find that only half of them actually read it?
Do your students come to you after reading the text saying “I don’t get it”?
Do your students turn in less-than-desirable work when they have to infer or analyze a text?
If you can relate to these struggles, you may need to do some reading comprehension remediation.
I have been teaching for 10 years now, and I've taught the book To Kill a Mockingbird each year. By now I've got my unit where I like it--the reading sections are manageable, the assignments get students to think critically, and our conversations are meaningful. But this year was different.
This year I had an overwhelming amount of students struggling, and I mean STRUGGLING, to understand what was going on in the book. I had students coming to class saying things like "I was so confused reading this chapter!" and "Who is Miss Maudie?"
My initial reaction was to think that they didn't actually read the book. But many of these students were good, hardworking students, and they were continually asking some of the most basic questions.
A few weeks after finishing the novel, our school gave a state-required test to screen for dyslexia. And the results were shocking. A great majority of my students were reading well below grade level. Many sophomores were reading between a 3rd and 5th-grade reading level.
I had a lightbulb moment--those students who said they didn't understand the book...they ACTUALLY didn't understand the book. They couldn't comprehend the text.
So immediately I started to make changes to my curriculum. Instead of working only on text-specific vocabulary, I implemented weekly vocabulary words with weekly quizzes. I also revised my next unit to focus on reading comprehension instead of inference and analysis.
And the results were impressive...not just with reading comprehension, but I saw behavioral results as well. Students were more engaged, I received more entirely completed assignments, and I had fewer frustrated "I don't get this" groans throughout the day.
So, if you're seeing some of the same problems in your high school students, you might take a look at reviewing or focusing primarily on reading comprehension before moving into analytical work.
When I started looking around for some resources to use with my students, everything I found was very elementary (and rightfully so--that's when the skill is first learned and practiced.) However, I knew my students would want worksheets that looked a little more mature. So I developed a set of reading comprehension activities and worksheets meant for secondary students.
But first, grab my FREE Remediating Reading Comprehension guide to learn some more research and strategies to use for working on reading comprehension. You can grab it here! You can find the 12 comprehension activities in the guide!
This guide has so much great information in it that will get you into a reading comprehension mindset!
Here's what it includes:
development of skilled reading
gradual release instruction method
annotation tips and instructions
strategies to use when reading any text
activities to supplement reading comprehension for various types of texts
And if you're looking for more specific comprehension resources for certain texts, stay tuned because I've got more resources comin' at'cha soon!
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